Poser 8: A Great New User Experience

There's hardly a person reading this who hasn't heard of Poser,
the graphics program that provides a “virtual stage”
for anyone who wants to use 3D characters to create imagery and/or
animation. It's hard to imagine a program that has been around the
block more than Poser has. Originally released 12 years ago, the
popular program has changed hands several times until it's most
recent acquisition by SmithMicro. Despite changing ownership,
somehow the user base has continued to grow and Poser has developed
into one of the most successful alternatives to the giant 3D
graphics programs like Maya or 3ds Max.

All 8 new characters in Poser 8

“We wanted to help the application
break away from some of the pre-defined opinions about it based on
what it was from Poser 3 on... People were ready for a new user
experience in Poser”

-Steve Cooper, Poser Product Manager

In August, 2009, SmithMicro released Poser 8, a
significant revision of the application that continues the user
friendly approach in design, but quietly adds some very complex
improvements in almost every area of Poser functionality. I've had
a chance to work with Poser 8 for the last month and found myself
becoming increasingly addicted to it's easy to learn work flow. I
only wish I could have worked with the program for a year or so,
because Poser 8 (and I suspect most Poser versions since Poser 3)
grows with you as your understanding of the program becomes more
complex. And yet, the program rarely gets in your way as you try to
create Poser scenes. I went from liking Poser 8 to working with it
for hours and completely losing track of time. An experience not
uncommon, I suspect, in the huge user base for Poser.

New Search function in Poser 8 Library

I'm going to present the “what's new” section in a
slightly abbreviated form for this review since last weeks
demo with
Steve Cooper covered everything in detail. However, I will add
a few extra comments on some things I missed in the demo article.
Here we go.

What's New in Poser 8

As Steve makes clear in his Siggraph demo, the challenge for the
developers of Poser 8 was to refine areas that needed to be updated
to the current technological level of other 3D applications, add
new functionality that would expand Poser functions, but avoid
alienating long-term users by changing too much of what makes the
program so good. A delicate tightrope walk indeed. One and a half
years of development and testing led to Poser 8. I think they've
managed to get the balance just right, despite a few too many bugs
here and there (several already solved by the recent release of
SR1 for Poser
8.

New User Interface with improved work flow

8 new rigged and fully posable photo-realistic models (based on
the new Ryan and Alyson figures)

There's a larger preview screen and an easy-on-the-eyes color
scheme (dark gray, silver, gold and complimentary colors). Poser 8
uses a series of “rooms” (Face room, Cloth room, Setup
room, etc.) in setting up your work flow, and now all of these
rooms (tabs at the top of the screen) are fully dockable and can be
moved easily around the interface. You can also drag and drop
clothing, figures; anything from the content library on to the work
area. There's also a “Favorites” area in the Library
where you can group content that you are going to work with
consistently.

Materials Room

One addition to Poser 8 that I missed asking about during
Steve's excellent demo was the new “Cross
Body Part Morph Tool.” “Morphs” are the
physical changes that you can apply to just about any aspect of the
figure's anatomy. Now you can dial a Morph Brush and paint across
chosen body parts. You can also save those changes as a single full
body morph in the figures “body” channel. Users in the
very active
Renderosity Poser Forum have reported that the tool can be used
to fix clothing problems, create new elements in the face (like
creases, scars, etc.), fix hair fittings and create muscle bulges.
I wasn't able to test this fully, but I found it simple and easy to
select body elements and dial in the degree of change. Not quite as
subtle a tool as what you can find in Quidam 3
(another 3D character creation program recently reviewed here) but
still a very significant addition which I suspect will develop more
fully in future versions of Poser.

Poser 8 and It's Unique User Community

“... Poser users are generally
amazingly generous - look at all the free stuff for Poser. Of
course there's a lot of free plugins and brushes etc for Photoshop,
but quality-wise I think Poser is one of the biggest "free
goodies" programs out there. I have some 220 freebies made
myself. What I make as a freebie is mostly some little thing that
someone requests - searches for in the forum etc - if I have the
time and it's something I know I can do fairly easily, I'll make
it.”

Poser, in addition to being an easy to learn program, has a deep
and (as TrekkieGrrrl points out) generous user base. Poser 8 has a
built-in ability to search “Content Paradise” (a
SmithMicro site designed to deliver Poser content) for content you
can download directly into the program. I found this to be a very
simple and easy process and the content was varied and interesting,
but what knocked me out of my chair was when I began searching the
net for free content. It's not uncommon to hear of people with over
100 Gbs of free content in their library. Renderosity.com itself
has a huge amount of free
Poser content, plus lots of very reasonable and inexpensive
content for sale in the Renderosity
MarketPlace by hundreds of users, many of whom spend a lot of
time in the
Poser Forum. Users will frequently answer requests in the
forums for content that you can't find anywhere, just like
TrekkieGrrrl does. Frankly, there is no other community I know of
that's as responsive and generous.

While Poser 8 is primarily intended for the user that doesn't
want to go through the massive learning curve of Maya (Steve called
it “learning to drive a submarine by yourself”), there
is considerable use of the program by professionals in design and
illustration. Storyboards, comics and other styles that allow for
posed characters can all benefit from Poser 8's easy learning
curve.

New Library

Poser 8 and Animation

“Poser is always sold as an "easy
animation" program. And it is, but I'd bet 98% of the uses
have never ever tried to animate anything. I've made a few short
animations over time, mostly because I think it's amusing to see
things move. And Poser is a very userfriendly animation program,
too. Not that it's easy to get a GOOD result, but it's easy to make
a quick flick of "something that moves" - and I know a
lot of more professional animation creators use Poser as a quick
mock up program.”

Poser 8 is easy to learn. After about an hour I had two
characters posed, clothing arranged, a simple background
established, lighting designed and two quick cameras set up. There
is a very easy tutorial built into the program (along with the
completely re-written 500+ page manual) that quickly teaches you
the Poser work flow: choose your figure from the library (all
legacy content from Poser 1 onwards is included), drop and drag to
the preview window, click the Pose button at the top of the library
and find a pose, add it to the scene and you are cooking. You can
easily pose the figure any way you choose either by using the dials
or through direct manipulation. The library's huge collection of
presets can get you started in the right direction (like sitting or
pointing, etc).

Animation of the various characters is simple using the basic
keyframe approach. In the Animation Room, you can pose your
character over a 30 frame timeline. Manipulating the character for
a simple jump and step to the right takes some careful work, but
easy once you get the hang of it. There's also a great Graph Editor
where you can adjust the timing of the movements you've just
created. Once you've got a cycle of movement established, switch
over to the Animation Palette, which lays out the keyframes,
tweens and other
animation elements so that you can copy and paste them into a
longer cycle of animation.

Poser 8 provides excellent lip-sync and facial morph ability
which allow for the user to animate dialog or character facial
animation for an animated film. Also, it's relatively easy to
combine animations and isolate them on characters so, for example,
you can have a character gesturing or turning their head as they
are walking. And very easy to set up a unique walk cycle in a
separate Poser room for just this process.

Surprising then that there are so few Poser animations out
there. I think TrekkieGrrrl is right when she says that the
majority of users simply don't use the very good animation
functions in Poser. Steve Cooper sent me a link to the terrific
Poser 7 animation “The Drop,”
created by Gabe Sabloff for the music
performer Chris Brown, that shows that top quality animation can be
created, it's just a matter of working at it. I suspect that some
of this is simply due to habit. Personally, I am very interested in
using Poser 8 and have already started to outline some simple
projects. I just wish I could have had the time to present them in
this review.

Final Thoughts

This Poser 8 review has been one of the most difficult ones I've
had to write. Mostly because Poser 8 has such depth as a program,
you literally have to spend months working with functions like the
rendering nodes or wxPython scripting, not to mention the Animation
Room itself. I felt like a teenager trying to describe in detail
what makes a Porsche such a good car. Some programs can be grasped
quickly, but Poser 8 is one that grows on you. And a full review
(and not just a list of what's new and a quick pro/con list) would
cover many more pages than a typical review allows.

In essence, Poser 8 is probably the most significant upgrade
since Poser 3, which (as Steve Cooper has described) was the
“breakthrough version” for Poser. That SmithMicro took
the time to go over the user surveys carefully and apply user ideas
to this new version only shows what a responsive and focused
company they can be.

Poser 8 is an essential upgrade for Poser users. The changes in
lighting and rendering alone are worth the price. Add to that the
deeper upgrades in the Content Library, rigging, many new figures
and you've got a version of Poser, that once some of the bugs are
ironed out, might easily be the best Poser offered to date. And at
it's price point (currently $129 (USD) for upgrade; $250 (USD) for
new) it's really hard to beat considering everything you get with
Poser 8.

It's hard for me to judge if Poser 8 is a “new user
experience,” as this is my first time using the program, but
I can tell you the old ideas about Poser having a clunky interface
and mannequin-like figures are a thing of the past. No question
that Poser 8 is pro level software for the everyday 3D artist and
filmmaker. Poser also plays well with other graphics programs like
Lightwave and CINEMA 4D, and very easy to set up a Poser pipeline
with Adobe/Autodesk and many other graphics tools. With a bit more
work on getting bugs fixed quickly, Poser 8 is almost a perfect
graphics application. No wonder it has such a huge user base.

I started out interested in Poser 8 as a reviewer, and
unfortunately, I'm now addicted (how many props can I buy from
Renderosity in a week?). As TrekkieGrrrl told me in a private
message “welcome to the club.”

SmithMicro has done a good job of providing learning tools for
the Poser series. Currently at their “My
SmithMicro” site (you'll need to register to access) you
can find dozens of excellent tutorials for all aspects of Poser.
They need to update more of them to Poser 8, but most of the tuts
carry over just fine from Poser 7 to Poser 8. Poser also has a very
good blog and is
constantly updating their Twitter page.

You can use the “Quick Start” or “Project
Guide” in the drop down under the “Window” tab in
Poser 8 to learn the basics. Huge, well-written manual, tutorial
and Python script guides are all very well put together (wish
they'd had an actual book instead of a pdf). Huge amount of
tutorials on the net, especially at the well designed
Renderosity Poser Forum. The Renderosity
Poser Gallery is filled with very well done images. I've
included TrekkieGrrrl's
“Rusty”
and JurZ's
“Secret
Corner” as examples of what you can do with Poser 8. My
thanks to both of them.

Special thanks to TrekkieGrrrl
for helping me understand more of Poser's history and user base.
She's an active presence in the
Poser Forum here along with many other excellent users. I
posted a scripting issue I was having and the problem was solved in
less than half an hour by a helpful Poser user. You'll also find
links for free content and many tutorials.

Regarding animation in Poser 8, there is a new edition of the
classic Timing for Animation, 2nd Edition by Harold Whitaker, John
Halas and updated by Tom Sito from Focal Press that teaches you
everything you need to know in order to create believable animation
for characters and even natural forces like wind or fire. Highly
recommended.

Sincere thanks to Steve Cooper for providing a copy of Poser 8
for this review and to SmithMicro for making it easy to find
information/media regarding Poser.

This review was written for the Windows version of Poser 8,
updated with the new SR1 patch. Poser 8 also works on a Mac (more
info at the SmithMicro
Poser site).

Ricky Grove [gToon], Staff Columnist with the
Renderosity Front Page News. Ricky Grove is a bookstore clerk at
the best bookstore in Los Angeles, the Iliad Bookshop.
He's also an actor and machinima filmmaker. He lives with author,
Lisa Morton, and three very individual cats. Ricky is into Hong
Kong films, FPS shooters, experimental anything and reading,
reading, reading. You can catch his blog here.

September 28, 2009

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Article Comments

gToon ()
posted at 1:51AM Mon, 28 September 2009

Found another interesting animated film shot in Poser, but too late to add to the article. Drew Radley's "Cold Equations". Using an old time radio broadcast, he animated the entire store in two parts. Great idea and very good animation. Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9Ar6M9TXB8 -Ricky

fast125b ()
posted at 5:49AM Wed, 30 September 2009

As a Poser user since version 1 who had to upgrade to Win95 just to use it. What a delight its been. I've had every version since and am amazed and how far its progressed. Not long ago it was easy to recognize something done in Poser. It's reach whole new levels. I'm constantly amazed a quality of new textures I find all the time. Spend some time with it but be prepared to be truly amazed when your done. I have found Renderosity to truly amazing also. I have my favorites, one only need look at Orion1066, Morris, or Rebel Mommy and a whole cast of others. I still remember a few years ago finding out there were 1000's of others just like me that had a love for poser but even better with far more talent then I do. Take a look around and you'll find the freebies tend to be nicer in quality then most. But the real delight is finding something you wished for and found out It's been created. AL

Thalek ()
posted at 7:12AM Wed, 30 September 2009

I feel a tad bitter about one part of your article: There used to be an equally friendly and knowledgeable user base on Content Paradise's forums---until they shut the forums down. Otherwise, I've had a lot of pleasurable experiences with Poser and the Poser community, and I hope to be able to afford to pick up Poser 8 someday soon.

TonyL ()
posted at 8:04AM Wed, 30 September 2009

Ricky, Good review, my friend! As you probably remember I used Poser (a few generations back) to animate my short "Mail Call" which placed in the top 15 at a short film contest in London. I DID find using the animation tools easy and pretty straight forward. Due to the limitations of the version I was using I had to spend a bit of time working around the problems but in the end all went pretty well. I will probably give it another try one of these days when finances permit. I have heard that Poser and Blender play quite nice together. If that is the case it would be very useful for me. Thanx for the good review and for clearing up most of the questions I had.

vtx ()
posted at 9:43AM Wed, 30 September 2009

Well, Poser is a fine program, and with V8 there surely have been some long needed improvements (like the library management). However, Ricky, I, and surely many others, cannot agree with you that Poser is an alternative to Maya or 3DS Max (and it's definetly not intended to be one.) Poser is mainly used for working with premade content while Max or Maya are used for creating such content (what programs do you think are used to create most of the Poser stuff, eh).